THE District Chief Executive of Akyemansa in the Eastern Region, Paul Asamoah has ordered the arrest of two illegal miners who stormed his office to bribe him with a GHC2,500.
The two suspects went to the office of the DCE, last week in an attempt to bribe him with the money, and a promise to top up later just to allow to continue with their illegal operations.
But the DCE, after collecting the money, called in the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) and the Police to arrest them and sent them to the Akyem Oda Divisional Police command, who later processed them to court with the bribe as an exhibit.
Mr. Asamoah narrating the incident to DGN Online said another illegal miner who attempted to outsmart them using the name of the Eastern Regional Minister, Seth Acheampong as having given them the go-ahead to mine and do reclamation in the entire District was also arrested.
The Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah who is also the Member of Parliament for the area commended the DCE and the team for the steadfast on his Facebook book page.
He writes “Akyemansa District, the security council led by DCE Paul Asamoah have recently conducted raids to stop illegal mining on our water bodies.
Yesterday, two illegal miners were arrested when they attempted to bribe the DCE and negotiate a stop of further raids on their illegal operations”.
He added, “I commend Paul and his team for their steadfastness and integrity”.
The Akyemansa District Assembly last month begins to train swimmers to complement the fight against illegal mining in the District.
The District Chief Executive, Paul Asamoah, noted that the decision has become necessary due to the influx of illegal alluvial miners in the district polluting major river bodies.
However, due to the unavailability of skilled swimmers and divers, many operations carried out for the arrest of the suspects have not been entirely successful.
He however said a few chanfai types of equipment were confiscated and burnt.
He explained to DGN Online that “We didn’t have such activities in our District as the rate we are experiencing recently, so anytime we have the information we send the police to clamp down on them.
What the chanfai operators do is that they fix their machine in the middle of the river and when you go there and you are not good at swimming you will be drowned so we sent a police team to the site and anytime they go they just dive and run away“.
According to the DCE, “It is difficult to get the divers.
They come from a long distance. Sometimes by the time you get ready to get them they also going somewhere so I will appeal that if the fight against chanfai and their activities to be successful we have to get dedicated youth that will be trained to become divers because they are the people who can help us to fight the chanfai. If you go with security men who cannot swim you will achieve nothing but if you have divers you can use them to bring the machines out to burn them and once we keep burning the machines it will drive them away”.
FROM Daniel Bampoe, Ofoase